Straegic ICT implementation within SME's for business improvement : the COSTWORTH Project

Advances in ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) in the last 15 years or so have delivered substantial benefits to manufacturing firms in the form of productivity and efficiency improvements. It is fair to say that these benefits have been harvested primarily by larger firms while SMEs have tended to struggle with effective ICT implementation, either avoiding such implementation all together or attempting isolated technology updates and implementations which often result in sub-optimal organisational improvements and poor cost-benefit ratios. The international Costworth project was designed to develop a methodology to assist SMEs in undertaking a broad analysis of key business processes, identifying the most important weak points which would then allow a targeted selection of relevant ICT modification or implementation to deliver maximum benefit to the organisation. This article discusses the application of the Costworth methodology to one Australian manufacturing SME. Both qualitative and quantitative data collection activities for the diagnostic phase are described, leading to the identification of process weak points and the selection of required ICT modification/ implementation. Improvements in key process performance indicators following the relevant ICT modification/ implementation are also discussed.